This year's movers and shakers
Major Brait shareholder’s stakes in well-performing retail brands pay off
RETAIL tycoon Christo Wiese has made the top spot of the Rich List for the first time, swapping places with mining magnate Patrice Motsepe.
Although the top positions have long bounced between Wiese, Motsepe, ArcelorMittal’s Lakshmi Mittal and Nicky Oppenheimer, the last three have their made fortunes from mining and commodities, whereas Wiese has stakes in some of South Africa’s most prolific retail brands.
He also has significant exposure to infrastructure construction and engineering, as well as the low-key offshore investment holding company Tradehold.
Wiese owns 34.29% of Brait (a major shareholder of Pepkor, which owns Pep and Ackermans) as well as stakes in Shoprite and Pallinghurst Resources.
Lance Sherrell in 33rd position, Arnold Goldstone in 73rd and David Samuels in 78th also own stakes in Invicta.
Another company that has created huge wealth is Aspen Pharmacare Holdings.
Shaking up the top tier is Aspen Pharmacare Holdings founder Stephen Saad in third position, up six places from a year ago.
It is only 16 short years since Saad founded the business that is today the ninth-largest generics company in the world.
He is not the only person in the top 20 benefiting from Aspen’s stellar performance — cofounder Gus Attridge enters the top 20 in 14th position.
Bank founders make a strong showing in the top 20. FirstRand co-founders Laurie Dippenaar is in 10th position (down from seventh last year) and GT Ferreira is in 17th position (down from 13th).
PSG founder Jannie Mouton is in 15th position, up from 19th, and Michiel le Roux is in 16th place for the second consecutive year.
Assore chairman Desmond Sacco edges up two positions into fourth on the back of the increasing value of his shares in Diversified Miner, a company he inherited from his father, Guido Sacco.
Discovery Holdings’ Adrian Gore is in 12th position, up a sturdy six places from last year.
He is joined by co-founder Barry Swartzberg in 18th spot. Swartzberg is the youngest in
❛ Most of those in the Rich List are South African, apart from two men
the top 20 at 48, whereas Aspen’s Saad is the youngest in the top 10, aged 49. Neil Jowell of Trencor is the oldest in the top 100 in 79th position, aged 80.
Cyril Ramaphosa, the politician turned businessman turned politician, has dropped from 15th to 19th position after reducing some of his holdings and selling out of Assore.
Nicky Oppenheimer, a longtime stalwart on the list, slipped out of the top 20 from fourth position, after having sold his 40% of the family diamond business De Beers to Anglo in July last year for $5.1-billion in cash. This money is not taken into consideration because it is no longer part of the JSE.
Most of those in the Rich List are South African, apart from two men.
The man in sixth position is one few have heard of in South Africa. John Whittaker is a lowprofile British businessman who sold one of Britain’s bestknown buildings, Manchester’s massive Trafford Centre mall, to Capital Shopping Centres for a stake of nearly a quarter of the group.
Capital Shopping Centres owns malls in the UK and South Africa.
Mittal, who is based in London, dropped six places to ninth position. In the period surveyed by the Rich List, ArcelorMittal’s share price nearly halved.
Bruno Steinhoff from Germany (13th position) is the founder of Steinhoff International and owns just more than 9% in the R76.4-billion furniture group.
Family names are consistent in their appearance in the top 20. The two Cape-based families are the Rembrandt Trust (the Ruperts) in fifth position and Pick n Pay’s founding Ackerman family in the Ackerman Family Trust, in 11th place.
Naspers media executive Koos Bekker, who has been described by Forbes as the Rupert Murdoch of South Africa, jumped six places and makes the top 10 in eighth position from 14th last year.
Whereas last year one woman was in the top 100 — Sharon Wapnick in 78th position, who this year is in 64th position — she is joined by Judy Dlamini after one of the most stellar increases of the year — up from 151 to 65 on the back of her stake in Aspen Pharmacare Holdings, of which she is chairwoman.